


Bête Noir

by jamtoday



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-05-20 07:18:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5996568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamtoday/pseuds/jamtoday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are more things than just Apocalyptic demons to worry about in the woods of New York, and more help than Abbie and Ichabod realize.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Work in progress

There is a sign along Route 31, which runs along the East side of Lake Otsego. It’s a small wooden sign with simple carved lettering that reads “Natty Bumppo’s Cave”. The children see it every time they visit their grandparents, who moved into Cooperstown in 1924 after the farm failed. Grandpa is a jack-of-all-trades, taciturn, but a good man who made sure all his kids, including the girls, went to college. Grandma is a homemaker whose kitchen always smells of pastry and whose hugs are warm and welcoming. 

Dad tells stories as they drive past, stories of Natty Bumppo, how he lived and hunted in the forests around Cooperstown. He tells stories about Uncas, and Chingachcook, and the adventures they had around Glimmerglass Lake way-back-when, before America was America, when the land was still being fought over by the French and the English. That time is almost inconceivably long ago for the children in the back seat and they feel a thrill of excitement at the wildness in the woods around their grandparents’ house. Mom is quiet during these stories, she doesn’t hold with these fanciful tales. Her family came later. Their stories did not come with them, but lay buried in far-away green fields laced with blackthorn and stone walls, held in place by tombstones. The children always want to stop and find the cave, but there is never time for distractions. Grandma is already busy in her kitchen, Mom says, expecting them for dinner.

Years pass and the children grow up, and although they still see the wooden sign invoking that deerskin-clad mountain man with the long rifle, they are distracted with their almost-adult lives. Only the smallest still wonders.

There comes a day when only the smallest, not so small anymore, is still at home. He and Mom are on their way to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Dad will meet them later after his work in the city is done; his brother will pick him up at the train station in Otsego. The turn off Route 20 at the top of the lake takes them down 31, and the he sees the sign. Mom sees the sign too and says:

“Let’s find it.”

Mom pulls the car off to the side of the road. She gets out of the car, in her sensible flats, blouse, and double-knit trousers. She walks into the woods. The smallest one follows, he has never seen his mother like this. She is not a woman given to whimsy, never mind tramping thorough the woods of Central New York in sensible shoes. They wander through the woods, finding a ragged hint of a path covered in oak leaves. The only sounds are rustle of their feet in the underbrush, and the call of cardinals. He hears a female and looks for her mate. There he is! A big red male perched on a nearby sapling, warning them away from his lady-love.

The path, such as it is, winds uphill before disappearing into roots and glacial rock. The footing becomes less sure and Mom’s sensible shoes begin to slip on the damp. She stops, looking up. There is no sound save for the occasional bird-call, the snap and pop of branches bending in the breeze, and the rustle of the occasional acorn dropping into the leaves.

And the sound of a huffing, snuffling breath.

Mom doesn’t seem to hear, but the boy does. The skin on his scalp prickles. He reaches for his mother’s hand.

“The path disappeared,” she says. She sounds disappointed. She realizes she actually wanted to find the cave. The wildness of the woods and her husband’s stories finally captured her. Her smallest boy squeezes her hand.

“Let’s go back, Mom,” he says. “We don’t want to be lost when the sun goes down.”

She stands a moment, looking up the hill at the rocky outcrop. It’s there somewhere, she thinks, listening in the stillness for…a myth. They turn around and begins the careful climb back down, towards the path leading them back to the car.

The boy hears a breath again, and this time the crunch of a footfall in dead leaves. He picks up his pace, Mom trailing behind in her sensible shoes which were not made for clambering around in nature and which have poor purchase.

“Mom, are you coming?” he says. He glances back and sees her, picking her way along the path. Something catches his eye above them, a shadow.... It disappears quickly

“I’m here,” she replies. He sees the shadow again, between the trees. Something dark, and big. They’re near the bottom now, he can see the shiny metal of their Oldsmobile pulled over onto the dirt shoulder. The shadow seems closer and he hears the rustle of something large moving through underbrush. He sees the glint of an eye, shiny and black. Something that might be a nose sniffs the air, leaning out towards them. A mouth, open tasting the scent of prey, hints at teeth. The dark mass starts to descend. He judges it to be bigger than he is, bigger than Mom, too.

From the other direction, a loud report that makes the boy and his mother both start. The sound ricochets off the rock at the top of the hill and echoes back down to them. Almost to the car now, the path opens up in front of them, clear of debris. Mom’s slips and slides and reaches for her son’s hand to steady herself. They’re at the car now. Inside, in the safety of metal and thick glass, he looks back up at the hillside. The dark shape is gone. Perhaps it was startled off by the sound.

“Are there wolves in the woods, Grandpa?” he asks later, at the dinner table. Grandpa shakes his head. No wolves here. Coyotes, but you won’t see them in daylight for their shyness. Bears? Yes there are bears, but they too will steer clear of people unless you come near their cubs. 

They don’t go looking for the cave again. Whatever wild hare, whatever whimsy gripped Mom that time did not return. The boy grew up and out of his fears of creatures in the woods. It was just a bear, he reckoned, warning them away from her cubs. Just a bear, and just as frightened as he was.


	2. Chapter 2

Abbie and Ichabod are seated in a booth at the diner. In front of Ichabod sits a stack of pancakes, two-thirds finished . He reaches for the syrup jug. Abbie laughs through her mouthful of hash and eggs.

“More?” she says. “I’m pretty sure its just sugar-water running through your veins at this point.”

Ichabod ignores the teasing and drowns the remaining pancakes in dark amber: Grade B, the trump card of all Northeasterners. Let the tourists buy Grade A. The waitress passes by, topping off their coffee cups.

“Is it my imagination,” Ichabod murmurs quietly, “or has the quality of the coffee _declined_ since the proprietors’ return?” Abbie makes a wry face.

“Coffee is not Moira’s strong suit, “ she replies. “She does make up for it with her homemade apple pie though.” 

“And an exemplary strawberry-rhubarb,” Ichabod agrees. “Indeed. I suppose, on the balance, a fine dessert is a rarer commodity than a cup of coffee, given the proliferation of overpriced…” Abbie cuts him off.

“The hash is better though. Nobody beats Dick’s recipe.” Ichabod takes that as an unspoken invitation and helps himself to a small bite of Abbie’s breakfast. “Oh you think so?” she says in mock-outrage. “See how you like it!” She takes a forkful of syrup-drenched pancake and crams it into her mouth.

From behind the counter, Moira van der Waal eyes them. She exchanges a glance with a group of ladies in an adjacent booth, all of whom have been obliquely spying on the young deputy Sheriff and the unusual Englishman who appeared two years ago, and who has lately moved into her house since the late Joe Corbin’s (God rest him, what a dreadful end) son returned from Afghanistan and moved into their cabin out past the Hollow.. “Just good friends,” they both continue to insist, their surprise at any suggestion of something more seemingly genuine. The ladies all talk about it, of course. It’s a small town, what else is there to do? Nobody presses, they just watch, and wait. The older Mills girl and her funny English friend – they’ll figure it out eventually. Everyone else sees it. It’s just a matter of time.

The non-couple at the table finishes their meal and asks for the check, which Moira brings over.

“Good to have you back. The pies were deeply missed.“ She shoots a glance at Ichabod, who pretends to study the bill. “How was the cruise? The Bahamas, right?” 

“Yes, oh it was wonderful!” Moira gushes. “I’m glad Dick got a chance to relax finally, I know he loves this place but really he just works so much and he won’t think to hand it over to someone new. I mean, he has the fella who works for him, but he’s not interested in just retiring and taking it easy. And he’s been really on edge since the summer, I just don’t know Abbie. It was good to get out of the cold for a couple of weeks and have some sunshine and pina coladas, and the buffet oh and the floor shows! It was just great, you really should…”

“Allow me, “ Ichabod interrupts, holding out the tab and cash. “Leftenant, my treat.” 

“Thank you,” Abbie mouths silently, as Moira hustles away to get their change. Ichabod inclines his head in acknowledgement. “It would be nice to get away, “ she says aloud, looking through the window at the overcast day. A Spring cold snap has come through, straining police resources with black ice-induced spin-outs and fender-benders, and even a Deputy Sheriff finds herself answering calls and setting up road flares. “I wouldn’t mind some sun, fruity drinks with umbrellas in them –“

Moira returns with Ichabod’s change and overhears her musing.

“Oh treat yourself, Abbie, you deserve it! The winter was so rotten. You can get a package deal too you know --” she glances over to Ichabod, “-- when you book with a friend.” 

“Thank you,” Abbie says through a frozen smile. “I’ll definitely consider it.” They rise to leave. Crane executes a small bow towards Moira, to the delight of the ladies in the adjacent booth. “Tell Dick I said ‘welcome back’, I missed that blue-plate!”

“I sure will, dear.”

They stroll down Beekman Ave, coats buttoned against the breeze coming off the river. Sunday mornings are like this when Abbie isn’t on call: the first cup of tea at the house – a habit Abbie has adopted from sheer ubiquity of the beverage in her home – then the drive into town to Van der Waal’s. Breakfast, a walk down to the river, grab the newspaper on the way back, and a lazy day at home, Abbie doing the crossword puzzle (deciphering the modern references in the clues is a bridge too far for Ichabod) and Ichabod playing a video game. He’s lately taken a shine to Portal, excited by the application of mathematics.

As they come back up the street, paper in hand, and round the corner into the parking lot, they spot Dick van der Waal, Moira’s husband and owner of the diner, leaning against the frame of the kitchen door, smoking a Lucky Strike.

“Hey Dick,” Abbie calls out. “I heard you had a nice time on the cruise.”

“Yup we did, Lieutenant,” he responds. He’s known Abbie since she was a toddler, but still always calls her by her rank. It’s the military man in him. She earned it, and he honors it. “Glad to see Moira get to enjoy herself. She raised four kids, looks after the grandkids, and runs the show here, she deserves a little luxury.”

Abbie smiles at the symmetry of Dick and Moira’s replies. _Goals,_ she thinks.

“How’s Spring Training looking? High hopes for Opening Day?” she asks. Dick is famous for his Yankees advocacy, and has even been known to leave the grill to his line cook and come around from the kitchen when discussions in the diner heat up.

“Looking good this year. A few new kids in the class, one from Oneonta by way of Pawtucket! Glad to have a hometown kid on board.”

“When’s your trip out to Cooperstown?”

Dick pauses, taking a long drag on his cigarette. He suddenly looks uncomfortable.

“Not sure yet,” he says. “Have to wait to see what their school vacation schedule is. “

Abbie notes the shift in his demeanor. Moira said he’d been on edge since last Summer, the time of his usual trip out to the Baseball Hall of Fame (and camping, and swimming, and hiking) with the grandkids, but she doesn’t press; if he doesn’t offer, she won’t ask. She files it away, though; Abbie is nothing if not in tune with the citizens she’s sworn to protect and watch out for, especially the van der Waals, who were kind to her and never turned their backs, even during her troubles and wayward years. 

“I might head out there myself, it’s been a long time. It’s a nice drive up the Taconic and out 145. Ooh, maybe see Howe Cavern?” She looks at Ichabod. “Wanna go cave-exploring?”

Ichabod senses that there is only one correct answer to this question. “I can think of nothing I would rather do more.”

Dick is done with his smoke and makes a move to head back into his kitchen. 

“Stick to the main roads if you do,” he says. “Those old country roads have gotten a little precarious these past years or so.” 

“Noted!” Abbie says with a small laugh. 

“I mean it, Lieutenant,” Dick insists, suddenly serious. He is rattled by …something. “I’d stay out of the deep country out there. Stay in a motel, if you go.” 

“Something happen out there last year?” Abbie asks with gentle concern. She takes his cryptic comment as the invitation to pry. Vandy is silent, and before he can respond, Moira’s voice pipes up from inside the diner.

“Dick!” she calls. “Orders up! Leave Abbie and her friend alone!” This is followed by peals of old-lady laughter; the gossips are having an enjoyable morning. Ichabod looks away, blushing. Dick snaps out of his turn into the Gothic and smirks. He stubs out his cigarette on a cement block.

“That Moira,” he says with a shake of his head. “Well, you two enjoy the rest of your day together.” He winks, then ducks inside before either of them can react. Abbie and Ichabod stand there for a moment outside the empty doorframe of the diner kitchen, too embarrassed to speak. 

“Shall we?” Ichabod finally says.

“Yes,” Abbie replies, turning to walk back to the car and make their escape from the collective winking gaze of the town elders.

Behind his grill in the kitchen, Dick wonders if he should have told the young Lieutenant what he saw. He knows she has some experience with strange affairs, she might believe him… Maybe if she heads out there herself this summer. What good would it do to tell her now? It’s not her jurisdiction anyway. Better just to forget.

The waitress' hand pops a ticket into the lazy susan and rings the bell. He grabs it and slaps a scoopful of hash onto the grill.


	3. Chapter 3

Three children run ahead through the woods. The old man strolling behind them can hear their voices growing fainter as they advance along the path. He is not concerned, they’ve grown up visiting these woods. By his side is a fourth child, older, in his teens. He sees his grandfather moving slower this year and hangs back to walk with him. They love this hike, and he knows that someday – maybe soon -- Grandpa won’t be able to make it up the hill anymore. The thought makes him sad, so he packs it away.

“I’m trying out of the JV team this year,” he says. “They are having tryouts over the summer so I’ve been at the batting cages with Dad on weekends.” 

The old man – Grandpa – nods his approval. He’s not much of a talker but he can get going when baseball, especially the performance of the Yankees, is on the table. 

“Glad to hear it, you’ve got a good throwing arm. Pitcher?”

“Nah,” his grandson replies. “Second base. Try and get some of those infield balls. Jeremy van Rijn has a lock on pitcher, I think. He’s really good.”

“Don’t give ‘em a reason not to pick you,” Dick van der Waal replies. “Let the coaches make that decision.”

His grandson laughs.

“Like dating. Hey, got a girlfriend yet? “ Grandpa teases. His grandson smiles and blushes.

“Naw…” he ducks away under his grandpa’s hand patting his head.

“Plenty of time, plenty of time. Go on ahead, make the rest of ‘em don’t go too far by themselves.”

David trots up the path to wrangle his younger sibling and cousins and make sure they don’t get too far out of earshot of their grandfather.

Dick enjoys the quiet of the Cooperstown woods – the patter of squirrels running through branches dropping acorn shells on the forest floor, the trill of birds singing about love (or perhaps battle), the crunch of footfalls on soft earth and twigs. He’s done this hike, oh…how many times? He doesn’t want to count. Plenty, anyways, starting when he was a boy himself and came out to the baseball museum with his father. Bringing his kids out here, and now his grandkids, is a special treat for him and he always makes sure to set aside time from running the diner to do it. Camping at Glimmerglass, swimming in the lake, the Hall of Fame and Doubleday Field, the Farmers Museum with working draft horses and sheep to feed… Someday they’ll be too old, he muses, but someday he will be too. Hopefully those days will coincide, so nobody feels the loss.

They had piled into the car early on Friday morning, Moira sending them off with a cooler full of snacks and a travel mug of her horrible coffee made with infinite love. She is his treasure – that talkative Irish girl from Yonkers that nobody in his family knew what to make of when he first brought her home for dinner in 1966. She grew up only 15 miles away down Route 9 but she might as well have been from another planet – loud, nine siblings, sixty-seven cousins, relatively new arrivals, and Catholic. Catholic! The van der Waals were old Dutch – solemn, Dutch Reformed, spare of opinions spoken aloud and spare of progeny, with roots in American soil for nearly 300 years. That first dinner at his parents’ house was certainly a test of their openness to change.

But Dick could not and would not be dissuaded, despite mild attempts by his father and older sister to point him in the direction of young ladies from their church and social clubs. He had shared a secret with Moira, and she with him. On their first date – arranged by a friend of Dick’s from town, whose cousin had a single coworker in their secretarial pool -- he blurted out that he had seen the _witte wieven_. Over coffee and pie at the diner he found himself stammeringly explaining to her that they were the spirits of women long gone, healers and wise women from their towns returned occasionally to visit. Sometimes they were capricious, and played pranks that required payment of trinkets or flowers or sometimes baked goods in order to put a halt to them, but usually just stayed in the distance, usually mistaken for mist. But if you looked closely at the mist, you would see faces, arms and legs, dresses and aprons – whispers of their mortal forms. He went silent, blushing with shame and fear that she would laugh in his face.

But she didn’t. She listened politely, took a bite of raspberry pie – the berries matched her lipstick, Dick had noticed – and washed it down with a sip of her tea. Then she told him about the _bán sidhe_. Moira had heard it once, when her uncle Mick was killed in Korea – the keening of a woman, the unmistakable sound of a voice wailing with the agony of the sudden loss of a loved one. She was nine years old at the time, and the pain carried in that voice caused her to drop to her knees. She swallows hard telling the story, Dick notices the light hairs on her arm begin to stand up as her skin turns to gooseflesh. He reached for her hand to comfort her, and in that moment they both knew that they were each other’s match.

After they were married – an experience unto itsself with each side of the family agape at the foreignness of the other, unified finally by their mutual appreciation for roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy – Van was called up and eventually deployed to Viet Nam. Moira spent two years in terror of hearing that wail again, and prayed every night to the Infant Jesus and the Dagda to bring her husband home to her safe and sound. Whether through, skill, luck, or divine intercession (pagan or otherwise), Dick returned and after a year they had the beginning of their family. With her small savings and his army pay, they bought the diner from the retiring owner and have been there ever since. Only once has Moira heard the _bán sidhe >/i> again, in 1983, when her mother suffered fatal heart attack standing in her kitchen. The one secret Moira keeps, the one she will tell no soul, is that she hopes she dies before her husband, so she does not have to hear it again._

So Dick strolls through the woods outside Cooperstown now, smiling to himself about his rowdy, carefree grandchildren climbing the familiar hill to Natty Bumppo’s Cave, the rocky outcrop overlooking Lake. He’s too old now to climb the rock itself, and the grandchildren too young (except for maybe David), but they’ll enjoy the hike up and clambering around on the smaller rocks. He hopes to tire them out enough to sleep in the car on the long drive home, or at least until they’ve passed most of the signs for McDonald’s and they’re close enough to Sleepy Hollow that he can convince them to wait til get to grandma’s house for real food. After three days of camping, he hopes the promise of grandma’s sausage casserole will be enough to keep the pleading to a minimum.

“Remind me to call Grandma from Cobleskill and ask her to fix up her sausage and pimento casserole!” he whispers to David.

“Will do, Grandpa!” David replies. He’s old enough now to be in on Grandpa’s tricks for magically producing just the thing that was promised, and just in time.

Glacial boulders at the base of the rocky pinnacle are the playground for the younger grandchildren, the landscape turned into forts and they turned into French fur traders and Mohawk villagers. David scales as much of the outcrop as he can, minding the warning of his grandfather not to break his head open as Dick does not want to face Moira with that news. A last picnic lunch is produced from a backpack: bologna sandwiches, chips, ginger ale, and chocolate chip cookies, before Grandpa announces its time to descend and begin the three-hour drive home. 

The children fairly skip down the hillside, careful to stay in earshot of Grandpa. This time David stays close by Grandpa’s side, concerned about him slipping on the downhill path. When the smaller ones get too far ahead, David lets out a “Yow!” and listens for the response “Ons!” – their family’s personal call-and-response as a method of children-tracking. When they are about three-quarters of the way down the hill, Dick hears it.

A huffing, sniffing sound.

The sound makes Dick’s scalp prickle and he feels the hair on his neck stand up. He looks for his grandchildren, and picks up his pace descending the hill. 

“Want me to have them wait, Grandpa?” David asks, noticing his grandfather trying to keep up.

“Nope, no no. They should be get back to the car. We really should hit the road.” He hears the sound again, and a footfall in the leaves, up the hill to his left. He looks.

There is nothing there. At least, there is nothing there he can see, but he can sense…something. Something sniffing, something searching, something tasting scent in the air.

“Down we go, kids! Last one to the car is a rotten egg!” he calls, keeping his voice as light as possible. “Go on ahead, David, make sure nobody falls on their way down. Lots of roots on this path! That’s good though, means the forest is growing!” David leaves his grandfather’s side, a little reluctantly, and descends towards his sister and little cousins.

Dick, moving faster but hampered by his age and bad knees, hears something new now: a low growl. The sound is deep, like something that comes from inside large body. He closes his eyes for a moment as a fear unlike anything he has ever known washes over him. He fears not for himself – he was infantry in Viet Nam, he has lived that mortal fear and learned to manage it. He fears now for his grandchildren, whose laughter he can hear growing dimmer as they hike down to the car park. This is an atavistic fear – a sense of something not mortal reaching for them, hunting them, ready to consume them. He opens his eyes, and with adrenaline flowing moves through the pains of age and quick-steps down the mountain.  
Animal feet are crackling in underbrush, pacing him.

He sees his car at the base of the hill, sun glints off the metal. He shouts with the voice of a commanding officer:

“Get in! In the car, quick! Right now!” David looks up quizzically at his grandfather’s sharp tone. The childish laughter ceases. David piles the younger children into the back seat of the car and gets their seatbelts on, then gets in the front seat. Instinctively, he locks the doors.

Dick hears the growl again and against his better instincts he looks up and behind him and sees it finally: a black shape, fur, the glint of eyes, and teeth through a mouth that is open, tongue out tasting the air. He does not know what it is, but he knows that it wants him, wants his grandchildren, wants anything in its path. He finds his keys in his pocket and pulls them out, car key in position. He does his best to sprint to the car. David frantically unlocks it and Dick slides into the driver’s seat, turning over the engine and hitting the gas before he has his seatbelt on. 

They head South on 31 in silence. The small children in the back seat are confused and frightened by Grandpa’s tone. They have never heard him like this. Dick peeks into the rear-view mirror and sees their wide eyes. He worries that they have seen their Grandpa frightened. He never wants them to feel unsafe, not for one second.

“How about McDonalds when we get to Cairo?” The children cheer in triumph. Grandpa will buy them McDonalds! He never buys McDonalds! They discuss amongst themselves what they will get: nuggets or cheeseburgers, Coke or Sprite, and what the Happy Meal prizes are, their worries vanished in a moment. By the time they get to 145, his breathing has returned to normal and his heart has stopped pounding.

They stop in Cairo as promised, the three small children bouncing out of the back seat. David ushers them to the bathrooms then settles them into a booth while Dick places their order at the counter. He lets the sound of their cheerful tiny voices settle his nerves; they hadn't seen anything, hadn't heard anything. No nightmares for his grandchildren. David joins his grandfather to help bring their order to the table. While they wait for their ticket number, David leans in to whisper a question.

“What was that thing in the woods, Grandpa?”


	4. Chapter 4

It’s not a cruise to the Bahamas, but it’s a getaway all the same. Abbie lets Crane drive this leg. She trusts him on the highway, it’s more or less a straight line and he can’t do anything crazy like cut the wheel too sharply when making a turn or doing “thank you ma’ams’ over frost heaves in the dirt road out to the cabin, making her stomach flip like she’s on a roller-coaster. Nope, he’s good on the highway as long as he keeps cruise-control on and remembers that her being a Deputy Sheriff isn’t necessarily a get-out-of-a-$300-speeding-ticket-free card. 

“An entire town named for James Fenimore Cooper, my god!” Ichabod had exclaimed. “Have you read the Leatherstocking Tales?”

Abbie had proposed the weekend trip after the weather had finally turned. She was hoping for a few days to unwind, away from Sleepy Hollow, away from the grind and her worries about waited in the shadows. She remembered her conversation with Dick van der Waal and thought about how she hadn’t been out there since before her mother…had her troubles. The area is really pretty, she thought, and a couple of days walking around by the lake and the town, visiting the museums, and eating vacation-food would be welcome.

“No, but I saw the movie of Last of the Mochicans,” she answered. “Its one of Jenny’s favorites, she’s in love with Uncas. She’s made me watch it a million times.”

“Overwrought, meandering, overly-indulgent – your entire Romanticism period of American literature, with its false depiction of the days before the founding of the nation as some kind of natural idyll, Eden realized – “

Abbie cut him off. “I was a Daniel Day Lewis fan, myself. The way he went running through the woods, with that hair, and that shirt all open…tsk” she mused.

Ichabod closed his eyes, bracing himself against the wave of feminine romantic reverie. 

“Leftenant,” he said, struggling for an even tone. “The literary sins indulged in by Cooper are innumerable, and his depiction of the local Mohawk people borders on cartoonish. As Twain said about The Deerslayer, it is ‘a literary delirium tremens.’”

 _Anyway,_ ” Abbie continues. “The Baseball Hall of Fame, Doubleday Field... It’ll be June, the kids are out of school, maybe we can catch a game. The Farmers Museum, too – you might actually feel at home there. You have to promise not to lecture the re-enactors though. Please.”

Ichabod is silent.

“Do you promise?”

Another long pause.

“I promise.”

Their first detour is through Bethel. Abbie had prepped Ichabod on Woodstock by showing him clips of the documentary, particularly Joe Cocker and Richie Havens. Ichabod, characteristically, had some observations on the audience, and the words “decorum” and “propriety” were thrown around. She was impressed by his appreciation for Hendrix’s rendition of the National Anthem though; through a surreptitious glance she caught his lips pressed together against a surge of emotion. That’s one more thing they have in common, she noted; she gets choked up whenever she hears it, too. Her mother was an R&B fan, but carved out a place in her musical catalog for Jimi Hendrix, and Abbie had grown up listening to him.

The second stop is an overnight stay at Howe Cavern. Abbie has developed – will she call it a soft spot? – a curiosity about seeing the world through Ichabod’s eyes. She’d taken him to the Museum of Natural History two years ago, and he had to sit down and didn’t speak for a full five minutes after looking at “Sue,” the T. Rex skeleton in the lobby. This jolted her, and she was forced to remember just how much time had passed –and how much was discovered and invented, just how much the world had changed – since he last trod the roads of New York. 

They decide on the evening tour, to see the caverns the way they had looked when they were first discovered, with hand-held lanterns piercing the pitch black, fourteen stories below the surface of the earth. Abbie had been here on school field trips many years ago, but had been too distracted by typical teenager antics to appreciate the beauty of the ancient geology, so she got a small thrill out of seeing Ichabod’s reaction, and lets herself absorb the wonder of it.

There is one awkward moment when checking into their room: the clerk assumes the request for two beds was a typo and attempts to check them into a “romantic” suite with a King bed and Jacuzzi. Ichabod’s protest is perhaps a little too forceful, and while she is certainly not interested (certainly not), Abbie can’t help but feel a little twinge of embarrassment at how quickly he insisted on separate beds. Even if you don’t want a thing yourself it never feels good to know you’re the thing someone else doesn’t want. 

The intimacy of sharing a hotel room confers an awkward domesticity that even sharing a home does not. Every move is a dance: using the loo, watching television, changing into nightclothes (Abbie still has to stifle a giggle at Ichabod’s insistence on a nightdress. As with his stubbornness concerning the rest of his attire, she cannot convince him to don even loose flannel pajama pants. “Too binding!” he insisted, which puts a picture into her head, unbidden and unable to shake off.) Each of them feels an anxiety they can’t quite place, and Abbie still feels an inexplicable sting from the conversation that occurred during check-in. Their mutual discomfort only intensifies as they hear, over the sound of the television, the squeak of bedsprings next door counting a familiar and unmistakeable rhythm.

“A little Claret would be just the thing,” Ichabod says just a little too loudly, and jumps up to rifle through his travel bag, producing a bottle. Abbie is impressed by his forethought; she wouldn’t mind a little something to take the edge off.

“More plastic!” he exclaims, wrangling two plastic cups, located on the desk next to an icebucket, from their individual plastic sheaths. “Is there no end to the amount of petroleum you siphon forth from the earth only to transform into disposable objects which have no use beyond a single instance, and are thereupon returned to the earth in a form which does not decompose and simply remains, in ever-increasing piles suffocating the very land upon which...”

“Drink, please,” Abbie says, making a grabby motion with her outreached hand.

Ichabod pours her drink and hands it to her. She taps his cup with hers.

“Cheers!” 

“Cheers,” he replies, still grumpy. 

After an impressively long time, the bed next door stops its squeaking. The nightcap does its work, the television and light are turned off, and they settle in. As Abbie finally lets her mind rest, Icahbod pipes up:

“Are there more caverns beneath us, in this very spot?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, “ she murmurs

“What would happen should they collapse, I wonder. We would plummet a fair distance, I reckon.”

“Are you really doing this, Crane?”

“It was just a idle thought.”

“ _Goodnight,_ Crane.”

“Goodnight, Leftenant. Sleep well.”


	5. Chapter 5

The next day’s drive to Cooperstown is pleasant enough, along poky country roads, past working farms and abandoned farmhouses, residents long since moved away, homes left to crumble back into the earth. One such farmhouse stands on 165 across from a sign for, of all things, an elk farm.

“Elk!” exclaims Ichabod. “I recall the occasional elk hunt in the woods near Croton. One particularly memorable one included Alexander Hamilton and John Jay –“

“John Jay like John Jay College? Where I went to school?”

“The same. There was a very young gentleman in our company who had a… particularly close attachment to Master Hamilton, even unto sharing sleeping quarters. “

Abbie raises her eyebrows at this.

“While this was certainly not an unknown happenstance, the brazenness with which Hamilton courted impropriety was notable.”

“Alexander Hamilton had an affair with a dude? How did that go down?”

“It all came to a head on the third night of our hunting party,” Crane continued. “Your Mr. Jay took exception to Hamilton’s flouting of even the barest of social convention and challenged him to a duel –“

“Hamilton and duels do not go together.”

“Indeed! He challenged him to a duel for the sake of the honor of our company, and was only thwarted in his plans by the young gentleman in question leaping between them and announcing her identity.”

“Her!” Abbie says.

“Yes, Leftenant! It was a young lady after all, Miss Eliza Schuyler, daughter of General Schuyler and among the heirs to the Rensselaer family.”

“Snuck away with her boyfriend for the weekend?”

“'Snuck away with her boyfriend for the weekend,'” Ichabod repeats archly.

“Rich girl creeping around with a guy from the Islands,” Abbie offers slyly. “Her family must not have liked that too much.“ 

“Her family at first did not much care for him due to his questionable provenance, it is true,” Ichabod agrees. “Not to mention his reputation as something of a libertine… His rise to prominence during the war acquitted him well in their eyes, however, so the subsequent formalization of their relationship is less of a surprise.”

“Anything else exciting happen on that elk hunt?”

“Well, other than Mr. Jay’s manservant also resolving into a lady companion…”

“Oh my God, Crane. WHAT were you guys up to back in the day?” Abbie laughs.

“I believe,” Ichabod replies, “the proper term is ‘shenanigans’. 

Their drive through Central New York farmland continues as pleasantly, and they arrive on the outskirts of Cooperstown to a late morning of sunshine glinting off Lake Otsego. Brightly-colored Italianate homes line the small side streets that lead into the center of town.

“Check in, drop our gear off, and head into town?” Abbie suggests.

“I follow your lead, Leftenant."

They make their way to a lakefront motel, checking in without incident this time, and stroll the few blocks into the little town center of Cooperstown. It is Friday morning, school is out, and the sidewalks are filled with families. Baseball jerseys and team caps are a preferred item of clothing, and children carry souvenir pennants and miniature baseball bats. Older boys – and some girls – are clad in uniforms of their local baseball teams, in town for exhibition games on the hallowed ground of Doubleday Field.

The Baseball Hall of Fame stands halfway down Main Street, almost to the edge of town. Abbie and Ichabod tour the exhibits, Ichabod quietly observing her reverence for the heroes of the Great American Pastime. She pays particular attention to the exhibits on Jackie Robinson (and, he notes, bears a slight resemblance to Rachel Robinson) and the All-American Girls league. He is familiar with the women’s league, A League of Their Own being on heavy rotation in the Mills household. 

On the way out, they visit the gift shop, where Abbie spends time fondling all the trinkets, with Ichabod close on her heels. She senses his boredom with her fussing over commemorative pens, notepads, and refrigerator magnets.

“Lunchtime?” she asks. “There’s a nice little diner in town. We can compare to the van der Waal’s. What are the odds that the coffee is better?”

“Significantly more likely, I’m afraid,” Ichabod sighs. “Although in deference to our dear Moira, it would be difficult to improve upon her pie crust.” They head out into the sunshine. Abbie closes her eyes and faces up into the warmth. All around her is simultaneously alive with the buzz of summer vacation and quiet – no Captain calling her to detail, no miscreant townperson causing trouble… no wondering what lurks in the shadows. Here is just the museums, the ball field, the main square with its festively-painted homes, and sunlight gleaming off the lake.

Ichabod comes up behind her.

“Shall we for a stroll, Leftenant?” He offers his arm. She takes it and they wander back towards the end of Main Street, to a diner across from the Town Hall.


	6. Chapter 6

Small-town diners are much of a muchness, no matter where a person may find themselves. The waitress with a blue-rinse bouffant pours coffee, the line cook with his grease-stained apron flips burgers and presses bacon on the grill, and the townies converge and gossip and crack wise over their Reubens and omelets and turkey-dinner specials. 

Abbie and Ichabod settle into the easy familiarity of their surroundings, as oblivious to speculative chatter that spun up immediately upon their entrance here as they are at home. The waitress takes their order -- BLT club for Abbie, beef on Weck for Ichabod -- and returns to her place behind the counter, dropping the ticket for the cook and immediately turning to the gossips to recount every detail about the funny-dressed fellow (English!) and the young lady (in law enforcement!)

“You just in town for the weekend? Where are you staying?” the waitress asks when she returns with their order.

“Just here for the weekend,” Abbie replies. “We’re at the Glimmerglass Lodge, just down the way.”

“Oh that’s a nice spot. Dave and Elaine are good folks, they’ll take good care of you. Plans for your stay here?”

“No agenda,” Abbie answers. “Hall of Fame this morning, maybe the Farmer’s Museum this afternoon. My friend is, um, something of a history buff.”

The waitress’ eyes flick over to Ichabod, who offers a slightly embarrassed smile.

“Is that so? You’ll love it then, it’s a reproduction of a small town from the olden-days.” Ichabod’s smile freezes at the turn of phrase. “If you’re an animal person, you should visit the farmstead, too: they have horses, sheep, a smokehouse, a hophouse --“

“Perhaps also a turn along the lakeside,” Ichabod offers. “I am fond of a wilderness ramble of a summer’s day.”

The waitress’ brow wrinkles slightly at this. 

“I’d stick to the paths,” she says. “Maybe don’t go deep into the woods.”

“I don’t think we’re planning any orienteering courses,” Abbie laughs. The waitress tries to shake off her mood for the sake of the tourists, but Abbie catches an edge in her voice.

“Oh I know, I know. But some people do like to go for deep-woods hikes. I’d just stay in sight of the town, is all.”

“Something not OK in the woods?” She senses something is, and feels the prickle of her instinct kicking in.

“Coyotes!” the line-cook calls over his shoulder. “We got some coyotes in the woods, they’re not shy like they used to be. People need to watch themselves.”

“Thank you for the warning, sir,” Ichabod says. He looks up at the waitress, who offers a worried smile. “Thank you, madam. We shall be sure to stay to lake-shore pathways. It offers a fine view anyway.”

“It sure does. Oh, the Farmers Market is open today and Sunday, just out back the Town Hall across the street, and there’s baseball tomorrow. Plenty to do!” A customer walks through the door, and the waitress turns to greet him. “Oh hello, Nat! Coffee?” 

“Yes ma'am!” he replies and seats himself at the counter. The waitress leaves to tend to him, and Abbie and Ichabod exchange a look.

“Coyotes?” Abbie asks somewhat skeptically.

“I can tell you, Leftenant,” Ichabod responds. “I would be grateful for something as mundane as a coyote.”

Abbie eyes the man sitting at the counter. He wears a linen shirt and what appear to be buckskin trousers tucked into leather boots. His long grey hair is tied back at the neck, and his face is covered with whiskers.

“One of yours, maybe?” she asks, nodding her head in his direction. 

Ichabod steals a glance.

“In leather trousers? I hardly think so.”

The man is clearly a regular, and chats amiably with the waitress, the cook, and the gossips at the end of the counter. In response to some comment, he turns over his shoulder to glance at Ichabod curiously.


End file.
